Category Archives: Federal Budget

That will be the cost of the proposed plan the Rethugs and Obama agreed on. How will the assholes in Congress pay for this? Glad you asked..From the NYT link:

The package would cost about $900 billion over the next two years, to be financed entirely by adding to the national debt, at a time when both parties are professing a desire to begin addressing long-term fiscal imbalances. (emphasis mine)

How do the Rethugs explain this horsehit to their voters when they campaigned on reducing the Federal Debt? There is no way, in my pov, to explain this massive addition to our federal debt by the rightwing nutters who have been screaming about burdening their kids and grandkids with the Federal Debt.

The cost of the unemployment extension is the smallest least expensive part of the entire plan…$56 Billion for 13 friggin months, which the Rethugs demanded that it had to be paid for prior to this…cough..agreement…but as long as their millionaires and billionaires get their savings…its just dandy now with the rightwing nutters in Congress.

Obama also gave them other jewels for the top two percent, again from the NYT article:

But Mr. Obama made substantial concessions to Republicans. In addition to dropping his opposition to any extension of the current income tax rates on income above $250,000 for couples and $200,000 for individuals, he agreed to a deal on the federal estate tax that infuriated many Democrats. The deal would ultimately set an exemption of $5 million per person and a maximum rate of 35 percent — a higher exemption and far lower rate than many Democrats wanted.

Isn’t this called giving away the fucking store? This shit just blows my mind. I see no upside to this for Obama, other than the folks who’s unemployment was scheduled to end this month. Yes, they need the money and it’s something all progressives and Democrats in general wanted….but the toll this will take on our deficit, while putting more money (at taxpayers expense) into the pockets of the rich…well, voters like me think this is total crap.

It’s gonna be interesting to see how in the blue hell this shit deal will help Obama or any Dems that vote for it come the next election cycle. Right now however, the leader of PDA, Progressive Dems of America has said the following about this agreement:

“Obama may have just ensured that he’ll face a significant challenge to his renomination in 2012 from inside the Democratic Party,” said Norman Solomon, a leader of Progressive Democrats of America. “By giving away the store on such a momentous tax issue, he has now done huge damage to a large portion of the progressive base that helped to make him president.”

Mr. Solomon added, “If he thinks that won’t have major effects on his re-election chances, he’s been swallowed up by a delusional bubble.

Good Luck Barack, your ass is gonna need it..and so will every Democrat in office that votes for this fuckery.

ThinkProgress has an analysis up which states Obama’s part of the deal helps more Americans than the Rethugs part of the deal..no shit sherlock, why would we expect anything else from the right?. .

Obama uttered those words at his second press conference in two days, today.

He can start with the Pentagon’s budget, and all those fucking contractors we have sucking us dry in Iraq and other places around the world…including here at home. The Pentagon’s piece of the pie is the largest in the whole…cough…pie of a budget.

The Pentagon gets almost a trillion dollars..over 800 Bil to get in the ballpark, not including Iraq expentatures, which are never part of the damn budget.

That is some kinda friggin ballpark wouldn’t you say? And the bean counters at the Pentagon know the hammer is going to come down, they are preparing for it. Take this part of a NYT recent writeup:

The obvious targets for savings would be expensive new arms programs, which have racked up cost overruns of at least $300 billion for the top 75 weapons systems, according to the Government Accountability Office. Congressional budget experts say likely targets for reductions are the Army’s plans for fielding advanced combat systems, the Air Force’s Joint Strike Fighter, the Navy’s new destroyer and the ground-based missile defense system.

Over budget is a Pentagon contractor specialty. It’s criminal how they milk those contracts. Half the time the crap doesn’t work either.

But wait!!! Pulling all those troops out of Iraq would save us 10 Bil a month wouldn’t it? Removing all the equipment used by those troops would save us billions as well right?

Nope, not really..

Obama wants to just shift men and equipment to Afghanistan..so there is no savings there and in fact it would add to the cost of the military budget. From the NYT piece again:

Calls by both presidential candidates to shift troops from Iraq to Afghanistan actually would add costs to the Pentagon budget, according to military planners and Congressional budget experts. It is significantly more expensive to sustain each soldier in Afghanistan than in Iraq because of Afghanistan’s landlocked location and primitive road network.

Sigh…fucking heavy sigh..So cut the arm’s contracts and high-tech weaponry that seldom works as advertised President Obama.

Prepare for the warmongers to scream about any cut to the military budget.